Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as the canonical work behind repeated re-recording experiments, and a pivotal piece of minimalist music worth listening to patiently.
What it is
Alvin Lucier's 1969 minimalist piece in which a spoken text is repeatedly played back and re-recorded in a room until the room's resonances replace the words. This is the 1981 Lovely Music recording.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2016 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends frereubu · 2023-04 · on “If Philip Glass Were a Film”
I love the earlier, even more minimal pieces like Music With Changing Parts: [LINK] And I love the parallels to things like I Am Sitting In A Room by Alving Lucier: [this video] (If you're not familiar with this piece, it might be worth reading about it first - [LINK] ) I hesitate to say this because it depends on your tastes, but I'd recommend setting aside the time to listen to these beginning to end if you can. You'll probably feel a bit fidgety for the first 10 / 15 minutes, but in my view it's really worth persevering because I find the payoffs are worth it.
Cites thevibesman · 2016-05 · on “This Is What Happens When You Re-Upload a YouTube Video 1,000 Times (2010)”
This is a cool homage to Alvin Lucier's I'm Sitting in a Room [1][2]. I was lucky to get a chance to hear Lucier give a colloquium at Brandeis when I was an undergrad---earlier in his career Lucier had been faculty at Brandeis. [1]: [LINK] [2]: [this video]
Cites necubi · 2020-10 · on “Teageneration (or: why I don’t trust transporters) (2016)”
This is like a physical version of "I Am Sitting In A Room" [0], a classic work of experimental music. In that piece, Alvin Lucier speaks the words "I am sitting in a room different from the the one you are in now..." into a recorder, which is then played back into another recorder, on and on until it becomes unintelligible. [0] [this video]
Cites kamiheku · 2022-12 · on “Enhance Speech from Adobe – Free AI filter for cleaning up spoken audio”
That could be a fun exercise, I'd imagine you might end up with something like "I Am Sitting In A Room" [0][1] [0] [LINK] [1] [this video]
Cites austinjp · 2023-11 · on “I Am Sitting in a Room (1969)”
A piece of sound art in which Alvin Lucier repeatedly played back and re-recorded his voice in a room, until his words became completely unintelligible, and only resonant frequencies of the room remained. It's a pivotal piece of minimalist music. Edit to add link to YouTube of the recording: [this video]